The Ferrari With the Dragon Tattoo

It was inevitable: Global car makers are rushing to cater to China's new rich. But will Chinese tastes reach our own showrooms? Dan Neil reports from Beijing

It was inevitable: Global car makers are rushing to cater to China's new rich. But will Chinese tastes reach our own showrooms? Dan Neil reports from Beijing.

By

Dan Neil

Updated May 10, 2012 11:20 a.m. ET

As a journalist, I am sometimes called upon to deliver bad news, so brace yourself: You no longer live in the center of the Car Universe.

From the 1908 Ford Model T to, oh, about three years ago, Americans enjoyed total automotive hegemony. The U.S. was not only the globe's largest personal-vehicle market—almost 17 million light-vehicle sales a year at its peak in 2005—it was also an unrivaled global tastemaker. From tail fins to SUVs to rims to plug-in hybrid electrics, U.S. auto makers and consumers have led the way. European and Japanese auto makers set up design studios in Southern California to study the habits of the inscrutable Yankee, with his Big Gulp and third-trimester belly. Proud companies sold their souls to seduce American car buyers. A Porsche sport utility (Cayenne), a Honda pickup (Ridgeline), a Ferrari with cup holders. Nothing was sacred.

Now China is the dragon in the room. As of 2009, the country is the world's largest light-vehicle market (sales in 2012 are estimated at more than 18 million, compared with about 14.5 million for the U.S.), and the fastest-growing. The prediction blithely bandied about here at the Beijing International Auto Show was an annual car market of 30 million sales by 2020. Meanwhile, the premium-car market is, well, erupting is the only word, with predictions on the order of 15% to 20% annual growth for the next decade. Western car makers, frantic to get their hooks into China's young and affluent, are rushing into joint ventures with Chinese interests as fast as the ink can dry.

This fantastic lurch into automobility presents many questions, not the least of which is one of moral hazard. Automobiles are the No. 1 priority for China's emerging middle class. Its government is plainly pursuing a policy of pacification using millions of automobiles—cars that the nation's infrastructure and environment cannot possibly cope with. Cars are China's 21st-century opium, and Western car makers are vying to play the part of the British.

And yet, with trillions of yuan on the table, global auto makers are not at all sure how to speak to these car-starved throngs, especially when it comes to design. At the moment, China's big spenders are obsessed with Western luxury brands and the European-defined vernacular of prestige—shiny surfaces, imposing chrome grilles, long hoods, rims. But how long before the Chinese's indigenous sense of style, of luxury, of its own allusive culture, emerges onto the world automotive stage?

"I was at a meeting today when that was the main question," said
Simon Sproule,
Nissan's vice president for global corporate communications, as he hurried through aisles of the Beijing auto show. "When will national tastes return to their cultural roots? We see signs it's starting to shift.

Photos: The People's Republic of Luxury

Ferrari rolled out a special-edition 458 Italia festooned with Chinese themes drawn from the 'longma'folk tradition of the dragon-horse. Ferrari

WESTERN CAR MAKERS are determined to find out. Last month BMW announced it was opening a flagship Designworks studio in Shanghai, joining General Motors, Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda and PSA Peugeot Citroën among the ranks of Western makers with their ears to the Good Earth. Infiniti—Nissan's luxury brand, originally created to compete in the U.S.—recently moved its global headquarters to Hong Kong.

What has been learned so far: Chinese society is passing through an awkward and vulgar adolescence with money. The ancient obsession with "face"—that is, the centrality of prestige, status and respect—has collided head-on with Western conspicuous consumption, driving millions of Chinese consumers into the arms of European luxury brands such as Prada, Louis Vuitton, Armani and Gucci. Western consumers have long since grown suspicious of European luxury brands as victims of their own mass-class success. In China, these names are practically talismanic, and they are everywhere.

The story is much the same for cars: Affluent Chinese car buyers so far shun Chinese cars in favor of blue-chip European or American luxury brands. The Buick Excelle is the best-selling car in China (made in China, obviously) and Audi the best-selling premium import. Indeed, in car design, "face" has the force of literalism. The Chinese love Audi's showy, declarative front ends, with their huge egg-crate grilles and vivid sprays of brightwork and LED light bars (Audis are used as state cars by the government). And bigger is most definitely better. In Beijing last month, Audi, Rolls-Royce, Jaguar and Infiniti, among others, unveiled extended-wheelbase versions of their products, designed to be driven by chauffeurs.

"Chinese consumers love to be driven probably more than in any other market," said
Ian Callum,
global design director for Jaguar. "They love opulence, they love all the conveniences, they to love to show off." At the show, Mr. Callum debuted the company's XJ L Ultimate, a glittering stretch specimen with lacquer-black-and-polished-metal work tables in the rear cabin, twin integrated iPads, two business-class lounge seats (climate-controlled and massaging) in the back and a Champagne chiller with custom-designed flutes.

"We're already succumbing," said Mr. Callum with a wry smile.

While other carmakers expect Chinese auto design to be held captive to European standards and aesthetics, the design director of the largest car conglomerate in China firmly rejects the notion. Peter Horbury, of Geely Holding Group, talks with WSJ's automotive critic Dan Neil about Chinese culture, arts and future of auto design.

Automobiles are also central to Chinese society's cringe-worthy monetization of marriage. In 2010, on a popular TV show—"If You Are the One," a riff on "The Bachelor"—a female contestant gave Chinese society a soul-searching moment when she said she'd "rather cry in a BMW car than laugh on the back of a bicycle." The unblinking materialism of the remark outraged many, prompting the central government to enforce new restrictions on "excessive entertainment," which only goes to show that even authoritarians get it right sometimes.

In obvious ways, China's nouveau riche are indulging in the same, worst impulses of Western consumerism: neurotic stuff-ism, invidious comparison, waste, vanity. In other words, they are behaving a lot like Americans in the 1960s and Japanese of the hyper-prosperous 1980s.

THE GOOD NEWS is that for Western car makers, vanity is in their wheelhouse.

And so, at the Beijing auto show and elsewhere, let the kowtowing begin:

• At the personal direction of Chief Executive
Ulrich Bez,
Aston Martin built three Dragon 88 show cars for Beijing, painted in symbolic and auspicious colors to celebrate the Year of the Dragon—24-karat gold badges and golden dragons embroidered on the headrests. You know, subtle. The Dragon 88 cars are each limited to 88 copies.

• In April, Ferrari rolled out a special-edition 458 Italia festooned with Chinese themes drawn from the "longma" folk tradition of the dragon-horse. The dragon coiling across the hood has a racetrack-like design on its back.

• Range Rover debuted its "Victoria Beckham" edition of the Range Rover Evoque, with rose-gold exterior metal accents. Posh Spice is herself a huge brand in China, and young affluent women are flocking to premium sport-utilities.

• Bugatti rolled out a Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse supercar in two-tone paint, lacquer black on the upper half and deep red on the bottom, adorned with dragon appliqué.

• Rolls-Royce would have liked to display one of its special Dragon Edition Phantoms—dark Chinese-red paint, with hand-painted golden dragons in the pinstriping and dragon-embroidered seats, along with a dazzling display of traditional Chinese marquetry—but unfortunately, said CEO
Torsen Müller-Ötvös,
they're fresh out.

Like the U.S., "China is an instant-gratification market," said Mr. Müller-Ötvös, noting that buyers in both markets often purchase cars off the showroom floor, instead of waiting to have them tailor-built. "They see their friends riding around in a Rolls-Royce…and that makes them in a way greedy to say, 'I'd like to get my Rolls-Royce as quickly as possible.' "

These times present the crassest temptations to auto makers. What is actually sacred about a car brand? After all, Porsche survived the Panamera nicely. Last month Lamborghini debuted a sport-utility vehicle that is so China-minded it might as well have a gentle portrait of Chairman Mao on the hood. And yet I'm confident Lambo will endure. If 100 marketing guys came into your office and said, "We can sell 100,000 more cars in China if we use paper lanterns for headlamps," would you take that to the board? You would have to, right? And yet, how far can you go?

Even so, Mercedes-Benz is also exploring traditional Chinese materials (silk textiles) and invoking symbolically important colors "to appeal to local tastes." Mr. Wagener notes that the 3,000-year-old Chinese culture has a long and fabulous tradition of luxury, "an even more natural relationship to luxury than Europeans."

THE DANGER IS that Western car makers will misjudge the optics of Chinese tastes and descend into kitsch. "If it's not done right, it can be insulting," said
Shinichi Muto,
an interior designer for automotive supplier giant Visteon. "You cannot be too direct with quotes and cultural references. You can't plaster ceramic and silk around a car and expect it to look good. You shouldn't notice it."

‘China's nouveau riche are indulging in the same, worst impulses of Western consumerism: neurotic stuff-ism, invidious comparison, waste, vanity. In other words, they are behaving a lot like Americans in the 1960s and Japanese of the hyper-prosperous 1980s.’

The company with the most experience along these lines is Infiniti, which has embraced a design language and palette of materials invoking classical Japanese aesthetics: metal etching to resemble washi rice paper; a grille design that recalls the curved blades of Samurai katana; traditional obi cord as welting in upholstery; an exterior-design idiom to evoke the power of the wind.

It's all pretty lovely but it hasn't resonated much with Western consumers, who can't connect with, or even recognize, these culturally specific quotes.

For the moment, the biggest victims of cultural imperialism are the Chinese car makers themselves. Their (admittedly early) attempts at prestigious luxury cars can be comic, if not surreal. The 5.4-meter Geely GE Embrand limousine looks like an up-armored Norelco shaver (the gigantic grille recalls, distantly, the design of the old FAW Red Star state cars). In Beijing, Lifan presented a modest four-door sedan with the hopeful name "Master CEO." No passenger air bag, but perhaps a golden parachute?

WHAT YOU REALLY WANT to know, Mr. and Ms. No-Longer-at-the-Center-of-the-Car-Universe, is: How will it affect me? This will be a case-by-case question driven mostly by product-planning arithmetic, but in some ways it's already happening. Luxury car makers' front-end designs, from Buick to Volvo, increasingly reflect Chinese-market tastes. The results are not always auspicious; witness the Bentley sport-ute concept.

Still, in the short term, Western tastes, if not dollars and euros, will dominate the luxury-car market. Setting aside Chinese Europhilia, car makers have good reasons—economies of scale, regulatory compliance, aerodynamics—to avoid over-localizing products. Also, many of the traditional decorative arts one might invoke in car design—silks and brocades, precious metals, ceramics and cloisonné—could be impractical in the harsh environment of an automobile.

There's also an HR problem. The Chinese auto industry doesn't have a deep bench of native-born designers and is currently drawing on the ranks of experienced Western designers, with their own culturally determined goggles.

Finally, it's understood that luxury has its own supranational identity. Another way to say that: Wealth has an enormous leveling effect on global taste. To walk through a Beijing shopping mall is to feel yourself not too far removed from the gallerias of Orange County—the same shoes, the same handbags, the same Armani Exchange jeans, albeit on somewhat slimmer hips. And if that's the case, couldn't you have saved yourself the 14-hour plane ride?

"The Chinese will have to find their own definitions of luxury," said
Stephan Winkelmann,
CEO of Lamborghini. "They will have to find it for themselves, define it for themselves. But they learn fast."

MG Returns...in China?

ENLARGE

MG Icon
Getty Images

A POINT OF PERSONAL PRIVILEGE: Once, a long time ago, I owned a red 1960 MGA Series II, a tiny, scroll-fendered roadster built in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in England. It was a soulful and lovely death trap and I still miss her.

As one of thousands of Americans who imprinted on MGs, I am a little discomfited by the company's fate. In 2005, MG Rover Group sold the MG name to the Chinese car maker Nanjing, which in 2007 merged with Shanghai Automotive, also known as SAIC.

SAIC also builds Roewe, which is the crudely renamed shadow of the British marque Rover. Roewe cars are manufactured in China as knock-down kits, then shipped to England, where they are assembled in the old MG Rover Longbridge factory.

In markets outside China, Roewes are rebadged as MGs.

Here in Beijing, SAIC showed off its first MG-specific design, the Icon crossover concept. It stopped me in my tracks. The hand of MG's dear old designer Syd Enever could be seen in the Icon's canted oval headlamps, the narrow rectangular grill, the small vertical taillamps and the rear fender haunches.

"This is our vision for British global driving heritage," said design chief Anthony Williams-Kenny. "We wanted it to be progressive and dynamic."

What psychic rewards could the MG brand offer young Chinese consumers? "…They are very discerning," said Mr. Williams-Kenny. "They understand brand, they understand the Internet."

For me and doubtless many more decorated veterans of the spanner, MG's reboot as an upscale imprint of some dull Chinese car company, well, it's hard. And yet I marvel that in 2012, 8,000 miles and a couple of world orders away from the old Morris Garages, there is still an MG, and Abingdon is still hallowed ground.

Corrections & Amplifications U.S. light-vehicle sales peaked at almost 17 million a year in 2005. An earlier version of this article incorrectly gave the year as 2006. Also, the MG factory is in Abingdon, England. An earlier version misspelled the town as Abington.

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